Around 2000 my wife and I lived in Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, where her brother, Jeff Poppen, “the Barefoot Farmer,” has been practicing biodynamic farming for over 40 years. (Google “The Barefoot Farmer” to learn more about Jeff and his work with the earth.)
Red Boiling Springs is a small town with a big history. In the late 1800s mineral springs resorts became a big getaway for people. The Red Boiling Springs area had five types of mineral waters which were thought to have medicinal value. While later medical science began to question the healing properties of mineral springs, Red Boiling Springs continued to have many visitors in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1936 over 14,000 people visited the town which had a population of around 800. The hotels are still in operation today.
Not far away from Red Boiling Springs are two small unincorporated communities whose names are unique: Difficult and Defeated. I have visited those hamlets and I apologize to any readers/listeners who live there, but I can’t help having some fun with the names. I’m sure Intercourse and Blue Ball, Pennsylvania folks get some stuff thrown around about their town names. Some of you may remember an earlier post when I shared about my little home town of Wawaka, Indiana. It was unincorporated and about the size of Difficult and Defeated. Native Americans dubbed that wide spot in the road “Mud Hole”. Small places with weird names can take a beating. Okay, now I have cleared the way to take a closer look at Difficult and Defeated.
First off, since learning about D & D, I have always enjoyed joking about them when I have felt things difficult and felt defeated. Not real funny but you can maybe understand how I felt pretty clever putting it all together.
How did these places get their names? Defeated recalls an event in the late 1700s when an early settler, John Peyton, and his surveying party were attacked by a band of Cherokees and driven away from their camp along the Defeated Creek. Okay that makes sense. The white folks were defeated and remembered it. It is unclear why the small creek, a tributary of the Cumberland River, carries the name Defeated. Maybe the defeat at the hands of the Cherokees was so significant that the creek and its creek side encampment took on the name Defeated.
Difficult is more difficult to grasp as the name for that community. This seems a stretch but a version of how the name came about is that the application for setting up a post office was returned due to the requested name being “too difficult”. I can imagine the post office committee just saying, “The hell with it, let’s just call it difficult” and having a good laugh. The video below gives a couple more options for the name.
Defeated and Difficult had grade schools, but high schoolers may have been bused to nearby Carthage, the home of former Vice President Al Gore. But just imagine school fight song lyrics and team names for Defeated teams: Go Losers Go! Give Up that Line! Run Losers Run! Over in Difficult you might hear: Try a Little Harder, Don’t Quit Now! Pain Is Gain! I am sure you can do a better job than I have done with fight songs.
If you are travelling I-40 take Exit 258 North and visit Difficult, Defeated, and Red Boiling Springs. The Cumberland River and the Cordell Hull Reservoir provide beautiful Tennessee backcountry.